


The Witching Hour

by WildandWhirling



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Cunnilingus, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Gothic, Hair Brushing, Master/Servant, Neck Kissing, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Potential Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:01:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29989467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: 3 AM in the morning, and no sign of going to sleep. Giving a long, drawn out sigh that seems to come from her soul, she raises herself out of bed. She pulls her dressing gown around her, the white, flowing garment feeling too light for the cold, but not having anything else to use instead (and not wanting to retreat into her closet to find a thicker coat), pulling on her slippers. This will just be a walk, she tells herself, to clear her head.The second Mrs. de Winter finds herself unable to sleep one night, finding herself pulled to Rebecca's room.
Relationships: Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)/Narrator (Rebecca), Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)/Rebecca de Winter, Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)/ich, Narrator (Rebecca)/Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)
Kudos: 2





	The Witching Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Mainly drawing from the musical!verse, takes plays after "Jenseits der Nacht". As a warning, while the author is sympathetic to Maxim, the work as a whole isn't particularly Maxim-friendly.

She releases a sigh of relief. It is only the clock, chiming the new hour. Just a silly, childish worry. No wonder Max has no time for her, how could he, with such a mousy, frightened thing?

Rebecca probably was never afraid of the clock. 

She tries to relax, breathing deeply, in and out, counting each hour as it’s announced. 

_ One...two…three...stillness. One...two...three...stillness.  _

3 AM in the morning, and no sign of going to sleep. Giving a long, drawn out sigh that seems to come from her soul, she raises herself out of bed. She pulls her dressing gown around her, the white, flowing garment feeling too light for the cold, but not having anything else to use instead (and not wanting to retreat into her closet to find a thicker coat), pulling on her slippers. This will just be a walk, she tells herself, to clear her head. 

Manderly’s halls are narrow and dark, especially with nothing but a lamp to guide her way, the walls closing in around her. She can feel the censure of long-dead De Winters as the portraits glare her down, fine lords and ladies with clothes of silk and lace and hard, cold eyes that tell her  _ you don’t belong _ . What would they think, she wonders, to know that their place in the house has been usurped by a paid companion? Did they lurk, even now, at the edges of her vision, just out of sight, out of touch, shadowy fingers brushing against her ankles? 

And then she is in front of a white door, the edges of it gilt, and she has never been in here before, but something tells her that she should go in, something that tells her  _ this is for you, this is yours.  _ She has only enough time to wonder, briefly, whether Maxim won’t be mad at her before her hand is on the cold, brass doorknob and her wrist is twisting it. 

When the door opens, it is not with the creak that would indicate a lack of use, instead, it opens smoothly, breezily, and she walks into a room that, even in the darkness, is very fine, the candlelight from her lamp catching on gilded furniture, none of it covered by a sheet. The curious thought steals into her mind that she is an imposter here, a burglar arriving in the middle of the night while the real lady of the house is away. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a billowy white fabric wafting in the wind, and she briefly imagines Rebecca here, in this room, come to take back her rightful place, only to look closer and realize that it is only the curtains that overshadow the door to the balcony, which has been left open, the sea air filling the room with its salty scent. She can almost imagine a past Mrs. de Winter in this room, watching from the window as her husband came home from sea after a long voyage. 

All those hundreds of miles away, and yet closer to her still than her own Mr. de Winter. 

She sighs. Surely there has to be some way… 

“Madame?” She jumps. 

Mrs. Danvers appears from the shadows and, as dark as the room os, the black of her gown mingling with the shadows, she looks like a floating skull. The girl fumbles for the light for a second, relief flooding through her as the room becomes flooded with light, no longer a kingdom of shadows. The housekeeper, formerly an emissary of the dead, becomes, in this light, a mortal, the same as her. 

“Mrs. Danvers! I didn’t see you,” she straightens out her nightgown, like a schoolgirl awaiting inspection and, as she does, she looks around further. In the light, it is even more brilliant, not unlike pictures of Versailles that she had seen in books, all ivory and silk, the orchids bursting from the marble vase at the foot of the vanity giving it a splash of color. 

“If you had wanted to see this room, I would have shown you.” Mrs. Danvers’ eyes pinned her into place. 

“Yes, I’m-I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep and-well, I suppose I must have gotten lost.” 

Some part of her wanted to run, run back to her room, curl beneath the covers and wait out the morning, but she couldn’t, her legs as firmly secured to the floor as the furniture. 

“It is a beautiful room, isn’t it?” Something breaks Mrs. Danvers’ concentration, and she looks to the bed. 

She can nod her head. “Yes, beautiful.” 

“She ordered each piece of the furniture herself, you know. Selected each one by hand. She had a skill for that, you know, my Rebecca. Lovely, isn’t it? Every day, she would have fresh orchids delivered here, personally. She would not be without them. You wouldn’t think she’d been gone, would you? You would think that she could come in, right now.” She turns back to look at her, and there is something in her eyes that is desperate, searching. “Do you think that she can? Do you believe the dead can come back and watch the living?” 

“I don’t know,” she swallows. Thoughts of the afterlife had never bothered her. Her parents had been dead for so many years that she had never felt their presence, had never felt their imprint on her life, only their absence. 

They stand, watching one another, but then Mrs. Danvers gives a graceful movement, not entirely a cursty, stepping aside to the vanity. “But you must be tired. Here.” 

The girl hesitantly steps to the vanity, nearly sinking into the chair, and she can barely see more than the top of her head in the mirror. “Every night,” Mrs. Danvers runs a finger across her hair, “I would brush her hair, long and dark, and she would sit, and we would talk. She told me, you know, she said, ‘Danny, I simply don’t know how I would go to sleep without your brushing’. The night that she died-” She stops her stroking of the girl’s hair, and she is not sure whether she is relieved or disappointed at the loss of touch. “Would you like me to brush your hair? It might soothe your spirits.” 

The girl nods, immediately regretting the decision. Why had she not refused? Why had she not returned to her room, called it off? Why had she put herself into a position where she would have no escape?

She has the worst feeling that they are committing some great sin, to sit there, for Rebecca’s golden brush to run through her hair, that Rebecca will be angry, where her body lays at the bottom of the sea. She can imagine her clawing her way in through the window, a water-rotted corpse, trousers and shirt torn around her body, her hair, the hair that had been brushed just as hers is being brushed now, tangled and ratted around her, a skeletal arm raised accusingly at them. 

But Rebecca is dead. She’s dead. There’s no reason for this pit in her stomach. 

And the brush’s bristles are soft against her pale hair, gentle, like a caress. It is easy to drift away, her eyes closing slowly, in and out of time. She is there, in her room, in the present, and she is there in, the past, an evening gown hanging off of her body, heavy bracelets wrapped around her hands, and she is there, in the murky future, in and out, in and out.

“It will only be a few more,” Mrs. Danvers’ voice is low, soothing, “Only a few more, Rebecca.” 

At the moment, it seems only natural, the name “Rebecca.” The brush continues, torturously, easily, teasing at the nape of her neck so that it raises goosebumps along her skin, which feels the night’s cool air more keenly. 

She pulls her nightgown around her, taking some refuge in the familiar cloth, though there is still some odd sort of tension gathered around her neck. 

“Do you feel uncomfortable?”    
  
“No, no, not at all, just the wind,” she says. 

“Yes, the sea can be very chilly, particularly at night. Listen to it,” she breathes, and the girl closes her eyes, her instinctual response when given a command, and listens to the quiet rush in the distance. 

_ Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca _ , they seem to sing, but not in warning, in invitation, the way that she supposes sirens might have lured Odysseus when he was tied to the mast, and she can feel her own bonds loosening about her wrists. 

“There is an old belief, you know,” Mrs. Danvers says, and it is hard to know if she’s talking to her, when she is facing away from her, towards the window, looking at the crescent moon shining just outside the doorway and the dark ripples of the crashing waves, “That the sea always gives back what it takes.”    
  
“I wasn’t aware of it,” she says, unsure of what else to say. 

“No,” Mrs. Danvers turns to her, and unlike before, when she had felt nothing but ice, now she feels a burning, as if, to the other woman, there is nothing more interesting in the world than her. (Or as if Danvers is a leopard that has just found a gazelle for the first time in weeks, like she’d seen in a picture book she’d once snuck a look at in the library, trying to vary her sketching references.) “You wouldn’t be.” 

“Please close the windows, Mrs. Danvers,” she says. She doesn’t know how this is supposed to be done, has never had a maid of her own before. Mrs. Van Hopper never said “please,” but she will never be Mrs. Van Hopper. Mrs. Van Hopper had made it very clear herself, and, privately, she’d always considered it a compliment. 

Mrs. Danvers says nothing, only leaves her side, floating over to the window, black dress trailing behind her so that she seems like a shadow gliding across the room, and she regrets it because, as strange, as cold as it had been to have the other woman hovering over her, it is even colder without her. The distance between that window and her vanity seems like it could not be greater, as if the room itself had expanded its walls in the last few minutes to make it greater. She has the worst feeling of being left alone to some great danger, and even considers calling her back, but that’s foolish. She’d asked for it, and she knows that if she did so, Mrs. Danvers would look at her as if she was a foolish, frightened child. The same way Maxim does. 

And, anyway, it is just the two of them there. 

The window clicks shut.

Mrs. Danvers’ shoes are heavy against the floor, each clop of a heel distinct against the polished wooden floor.

“Now,” she says, running a cool hand along the back of the girl’s head, as if she is a small kitten, and she finds herself sinking into the touch. It has been so long since anyone has touched her, even so much as held her hand. Bea does her best, when she’s there, and she’s...warm, but they are fleeting, hesitant, and spaced out from one another so that the girl had spread the moments out before her like old postcards. “Would you like me to continue, Madame?” 

Hesitantly, she nods her head. 

“I thought you might,” and she doesn’t know if Mrs. Danvers says it to her or herself, but then the other woman pauses, looking her over. “But you are still chilly, Madame.” 

She goes over to the wardrobe, and even before she takes it out, the girl anticipates the flash of red. Strange, she’s never been here before. But she supposes that she has heard one of the other servants discuss it, or seen it in a picture somewhere. 

Rebecca’s red coat. Her favorite. 

Mrs. Danvers slips it around her shoulders, cool satin and warm furs caressing her, Mrs. Danvers’ hands brushing along the younger woman’s shoulders, and though she is fully covered in her dressing gown, and doubly so with the coat against her, she has somehow never felt so bare. 

Still, there is something...some new found confidence in it, not a burst, but a trickle, creeping its way through her, slowly and smoothly. She has never worn anything so luxurious as this, not even since becoming Maxim’s wife, and as she looks in the mirror, it is as if she sees another woman looking back at her. Someone older, sophisticated, the kind of woman who has a maid and a vanity and knows exactly how she wants each to work to their purposes. She feels rather than consciously makes her back straighten against the chair. The unease from before melts away, and it is just her and Danvers there, alone, without the shadowy, water-logged figure. 

“Better, Madame?” Danvers asks.

It might be mocking, it might be sincere, she doesn’t know. All she knows is that a small smile comes on her face. 

“Yes, Mrs. Danvers, it is.” The voice is cooler, firmer, but with a certain zest beneath it. Not the voice of a penniless orphan stranded in Monte Carlo with a petty tyrant, nor of a mousy young wife stranded in a large mansion with a petty tyrant, but someone else entirely. 

“Would that be all, Madame?” Her warm breath washes over Mrs. de Winter’s face, anticipating, vulnerable.

She does not know what it is that compels her to turn, a cool, coy smile on her face hand just resting against her neck. “Actually, I’m feeling tense, could you do anything, by any chance?” 

Danvers, for a moment, looks genuinely taken aback, but then her face settles into its usual unreadable expression. “I live to serve the lady of the manor.” 

Her fingers settle against Mrs. de Winter’s neck, little pinpricks of ice that raise her skin, rubbing the tension away. One particularly rough knot is eased away beneath Danvers’ persistent fingers and Mrs. de Winter leans her neck back, her mouth falling open in appreciation. 

Danvers eyes her cautiously, like a wild animal being offered a piece of scrap meat for the first time, but Mrs. de Winter does not withdraw, keeping the offered neck and throat, only watching the other woman out of the corner of her eye, anticipating the touch of Danvers’ mouth even before it settles into the crook of her neck. The other woman mouths at her long-neglected skin, lavishing attention her and moving along the column of her neck until she is at her jaw, then at her cheek, and then at her mouth, and then they are kissing, as she’s kissed Max, but  _ more _ . When Max has kissed her, there has always been a distance to it, a chasteness, but Danvers’ kisses are desperate, pleading, just as they are possessive, taking control of her mouth, of her throbbing body.

Danvers’ finger brushes along Mrs. de Winter’s breast, freeing it from the silken prison that surrounds it, though not ridding her of the dressing gown, and Mrs. de Winter sighs in appreciation, running a hand over the top of Danvers’ slick hair. She had imagined Max coming to her like this, once, of making love to her spontaneously, but that had never happened. Lovemaking, back then, had seemed a vague, distant thing, not something that real people could do. 

That she is doing now, her thoughts becoming clouded once again at Danvers’ consuming kisses. Poor, sweet Max has no idea what his wife is doing. He never did. 

She whimpers at the touch, her tongue tentatively moving against Danvers’ mouth, but the only response she gets in return is Danvers pulling back, running a finger along her lower lip, holding her just out of range.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Danvers says, and she has no idea how someone can be so authoritative one moment, so plaintive the next. “Not yet.” Still, she gives her a series of small kisses that have no hope of quenching the girl, pinching her nipple in-between her two knuckles and swallowing the resulting cry. 

“Danvers-please- _ Danny _ -” The kisses take on a more urgent pace, Danvers’ hand moving down, down, until-

The long, slender finger brushes against her entrance, circling it slowly, gently, catching along the damp hair that lines her sex, and she should be horrified, should apologize, or tell her to stop, or run, but an alien feeling of confidence slips into her instead, because she is the lady of the manor. This is her right, this is Danvers’ place, and that is all she knows as the finger thrusts into her once, twice, three times, the pace leisurely and punishing at the same time. 

This is as it is supposed to be, as it was always supposed to be.   
  
“Rebecca…” the finger crooks inside her and her body does not bend, no, because she is the mistress of Manderly, and she doesn’t bend, instead her body crashes against it, like the waves crashing against the shore. “My Rebecca.” And Mrs. De Winter’s mouth finds hers, taking her upper lip between hers, body grinding to the rhythm that they both set, and it isn’t enough, it isn’t enough. 

It will never be enough.

“Bed, Danny.” And the voice is not hers and it is, all at once. 

The bed sinks easily to accommodate her as the falls on top of it, the dressing gown pooling around her draping the silver covers in scarlet. Danvers follows her shortly afterwards, their kisses merging and melding together, and this is natural, yes, this is as it should be. Her and Danny, and Danvers looks up at her, her eyes pleading, and she does not know what she agrees to when she looks at her coolly, regally, her eyes flicking downwards, but she knows that it is part of this, that this is her right. 

She is the mistress of Manderly.

Danvers gives a small small that is almost flustered, lowering herself until she is pulling the nightdress up, the cream silk gathering at Mrs. de Winter’s thighs, the night air washing over her body raising gooseflesh. Mrs. de Winter wonders how it will work, when her face has nothing like her fingers to thrust in, and then Danvers’ mouth is against her thigh, sucking kisses into the sensitive, soft skin there, and then it is against her inner leg. 

One kiss. Then another. Slow, seductive. “My Rebecca.” And it is a murmur, the other woman’s head collapsing against the pillow. Then, Danvers looks up at her, maintaining eye contact with her cool, black eyes, shifting to the other leg. One kiss, the another. “My Rebecca”, like a chant to bring back the dead, only Rebecca is not dead, because Rebecca can never die. Will never die. They tried to kill her, but she is there, in this room, in her body, in her soul.

And then she is licking a long stripe against her mistress’ cunt, the tongue delving just low enough to tease her entrance, and it is the first time that she has been selfish, the first time she has demanded anything, pulling hard on Mrs. Danvers’ hair, feeling it come undone and loosed from the tight bun, falling in dark waves around her while her tongue is pressed up as tightly against her as it possibly can be. She feels the strangest urge, to run, to dive into it, to do  _ something _ , but instead all she does is buck her hips against Mrs. Danvers. 

Mrs. Danvers locks her lips around the pearl at the front of her sex, the place where Maxim had never touched, the tip of her tongue brushing it, and it is a pure feeling, something that is impossible to describe as good or bad, agony, ecstasy, terror, illumination, only that it is like a lightning bolt, and it feels as if her heart will explode at any moment as it overtakes her entire body in heavy, shuddering waves, mouth falling open in a wordless scream and all she can do is dig and drive further, more, more, moremoremoremore. 

When it is done, Danvers slips in beside her, running a hand along the underside of her breast, which peaks out from the nightgown still. She should probably tuck it back in, for modesty’s sake. An hour or two ago, she would have. But she likes the way that Danvers looks at her, predatory and gleaming and submissive at once, likes the sense of power over  _ something _ . 

She’ll never have Max’s love. She’ll never have Monte Carlo again and the puffy white clouds hanging over the ocean and all the hopes and dreams that she tried and failed to bottle. But she will have Manderly, and for an orphan girl, that is more than enough. 

So, she guides Danver’s hand, placing her palm directly above her breast, feeling like someone much older and more experienced. The type of woman to wear a black dress and pearls. The lady of Manderly. 

“Will that be all, Mrs. De Winter?” Danvers asks, voice trembling as Mrs. De Winter guides her thumb across a nipple, letting it harden again, already imagining doing the same to her, letting the long, conservative black dress burn away from her. 

She pins Danvers to the bed, her body pressing down against her hips, face directly above the older woman’s. “No, Mrs. Danvers,” she says, and she sounds mature, flippant, in control, the type of woman who would seem to throw things on only for everything to look perfectly in order when she was dressed, and the confidence is like a thousand bubbles inside of her. “I don’t believe it will be. Not until you have worked to my  _ complete _ satisfaction.” 

“I live only to serve the lady of the manor,” Danvers says, and then she gasps as Mrs. De Winter’s mouth is on her neck, teeth brushing against her throat, gasping the name time after time again,  _ Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca _ , and it suits her, more than her old name ever did, suits her like a fitted gown or a pair of satin gloves,  _ Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca _ , because Rebecca is the lady of Manderly, always has and always will be, and she is the lady of Manderly, and she is Danvers’, and Danvers is hers, Danvers’ mouth and tongue and body, the body that she grinds against with an agonizing, agitating slowness, any ease she might have felt from her first time faded, and she knows that she has discovered something tentative and new that is hers and always will be. 

_ Rebecca, Rebecca, Rebecca… _

As she kisses Danvers, tongue roving into her mouth as her fingers work the buttons of her dress with an expertise beyond her own life, she thinks she smells a faint hint of orchids in the air, before her mind is occupied with other things. 

**Author's Note:**

> According to my Google Docs folder, I started this on February 9, 2020, so a happy belated birthday.


End file.
